Stephenson's "Mutsmag"
is based primarily on versions of "Munsmeg" and "Mutsmag"
collected by Richard Chase. These tales illustrate the relationship between
stories taken directly from the oral traditions, and adaptations by contemporary
writers, in this case a playwright. The Appalachian oral tradition is one of
the richest in America, as this is one of many wonder tales brought to the southern
mountains by Scots-Irish immigrants and other European settlers from the eighteenth
to the twentieth centuries. Retold by generations of mountain storytellers,
the tales blend Old World folktale motifs with elements of regional American
culture and dialect.

Richard Chase (1904-88), who grew up in northern Alabama, had a long career
as a popular storyteller and folklorist in southern Appalachia. Although his
methods of collecting, combining and retelling folktales from rural storytellers
in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia have been controversial with folklore
scholars, he acknowledged that he had taken a free hand in the re-telling,
using his own storytelling experience when preparing tales to publish. His best-known
books, The Jack Tales (1943), Grandfather Tales (1948) and
American Folk Tales and Songs (1956), are still among the most popular
folktale collections in America.

Chase and James Taylor Adams, whose family had a long history in Wise County,
Virginia, both worked for the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and
1940s. For several decades Adams kept typewritten copies of folklore collected
by himself, Chase and others. After Adams' death, his widow Dicey gave his papers
to Clinch Valley College. When Rex Stephenson and Jack Tale Player Ronnie Davis
were looking for stories, Mrs. Adams said they could use whatever they found
in the Adams papers. What they found was a gold mine of folklore in twelve neglected
cardboard boxes in the college archives. The James Taylor Adams Collection,
with the only copies of thousands of items that the WPA did not publish, is
now archived at University of Virginias College at Wise (formerly Clinch
Valley College) and the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College. The version of Munsmeg reprinted
in AppLit and used as a source by Rex Stephenson is attributed to Richard Chase,
Proffitt, Virginia (where he lived for a time). No date or other informant is
indicated, but Munsmeg is very similar to Mutsmag in Grandfather Tales. There Chase lists a number of oral sources: Adams,
other Wise County residents, and Cratis D. Williams, a prominent linguist and
balladeer/storyteller in Boone, North Carolina. Williams traced his version
of "Mutts Mag" (recorded at Boone in 1981, published in 2003) to his
great-grandmother, a poor woman born in 1827 in Wayne County, VA. Charlotte Ross noted (in Encyclopedia of Appalachia) that Williams' mother Mona Williams traced the tale to 1805 in her family.

As Chase noted, Munsmeg is related to tale type 1119, Molly
Whuppie, a folktale of English and Celtic origins about a poor but brave
girl who defeats a cannibalistic giant and his wife. Molly is similar to Jack the giant killer in many British and American folktales, and Nippy, a boy in other American tales,
has adventures with even closer parallels to Mollys and Mutsmags. Click here for comments on the heroine's name, Munsmeg or Mutsmag; other storytellers have called the heroine Mutzmag, Muts Mag, and
Muncimeg. For more on variants of this tale, see AppLit's folktale index page Mutsmag. For more
on Stephenson's adaptation, see below.

R. Rex Stephenson, Professor of Drama at Ferrum College, has written many plays
based on folklore, history, and classic works of childrens literature.
He is founder, writer and director of the
Jack Tale Players. In 1975, after his oldest daughter brought home a copy
of Richard Chases collection, The Jack Tales, Stephenson decided
to adapt Appalachian folktales using the story theatre method
of dramatization, a style that lies between storytelling and an acted-out
play. The narrator uses some sound effects and the actors use very few costumes
or props as they portray characters and objects. Stephenson began by
consulting
with Chase and obtaining unpublished versions of folktales from WPA files and
oral storytellers. Over the years the Jack Tale Players, a group of student
and professional actors, have performed regularly for audiences of all ages
in southern Virginia, as well as traveling to many other states and England.

"Ashpet," "Mutsmag," "The Three Old Womens
Bet" and "Catskins" are Appalachian tales adapted by Stephenson in 1998-2007, focusing
on female protagonists instead of the folk hero Jack. As storytellers often
do, Stephenson changed some details, and he blended motifs from other folktales
even more in Mutsmag than he had in earlier adaptations. Using the
unpublished Munsmeg from the
James Taylor Adams Collection as his primary source, he expanded the traits
that make Mutsmag, like other Appalachian heroes and contemporary heroines,
less dependent on magic help than her European counterparts, and more reliant
on her own wits and resourcefulness, as well as gifts inherited from her dying
mother. Stephenson added a humorous gang of one-eyed robbers in a scene that
shows Mutsmag's growing ability to fend for herself and stand up to her mean
sisters. Their
death threat is reminiscent of a scene in Chase's "Jack
and the Doctor's Girl" when some robbers tell Jack, "We got to kill ye.
That's our business here." When Mutsmag tricks the dumb robbers into tying her
sisters to a tree, Stephenson's adaptation is similar to parts of Scottish and Irish tales that are related to "Mutsmag": In "Maol a Chliobain" (Scottish) and "Hairy Rouchy" (Irish), the selfish older sisters tie the heroine to a tree when they try to prevent her from following them. Also, in a Greek tale, "How
the Dragon was Tricked," a jealous older brother ties the trickster
hero to a tree. Stephenson’s ending, in which Mutsmag chooses her own reward, is
a wonderful compromise between variants of this tale with the traditional ending
of marriage to a prince and those with monetary rewards but no marriage. The
drawing at left shows the king offering Mutsmag a box of gold or the love-struck
prince.

Stephenson, who
has three daughters, said he likes dramatizing folktales about girls because
a father of girls is always interested in strong female characters. You
hope all your kids would turn out like Mutsmag, would stand up to people and
make right decisions based on what they want out of life rather than what is
expected of them (October 1, 2001).

In December 2001,
Stephenson wrote the version of "Mutsmag" used in the online storybook,
following the plot in his script. In January 2002, he and Tina Hanlon divided
up the story page by page, matching the drawings by school children with each
part of the plot. See below for more on the illustrations and online version.

In May 2000, the Jack
Tale Players performed Stephenson's new adaptation of "Mutsmag" in
all the schools in Franklin County, VA. Children in K-3 classes drew pictures
after seeing the performance. Their drawings were displayed in the lobby of
the Blue Ridge Dinner
Theatre in July, during the production of Stephenson's new family play,
The New Snow White. Some of these drawings are shown on this page and
at the top of Ferrum Performers Keep Jack Tales Alive
and on the page Illustrations for "Mutsmag." (And there is a drawing of Ashpet on the Ashpet
bibliography page.)

In December 2001,
Stephenson wrote the version of "Mutsmag" used in the online storybook,
following the plot in his script. In January 2002, he and Tina Hanlon divided
up the story page by page, matching selected drawings by school children with
each part of the plot. Then R. Wymann Spencer, a student at Ferrum College working
in the DuPont Technology Lab, used the children's drawings and Stephenson's
text to develop the partially animated online version of the story for AppLit.
The drawing above left (by Amber at Sontag Elementary School, grade 1) provided
the images of Mutsmag, her two sisters and her mother used through much of the
online story. Other examples of the school children's original drawings appear
on this page and on Illustrations for "Mutsmag." Spencer cropped the drawings and added a few visual details
to make the whole story flow together, with some interesting movements in many
scenes (such as the mother floating up to heaven when she dies early in the
story).

Some observations
on all the drawings that were sent in from the schools:

Where the actors
use their bodies to create
the tree, the robbers little house, and a cooking pot, most of the
children (but not all) drew images of trees, cabins, and pots. Thus the story theatre
method of dramatization is effective in inspiring the viewers to imagine
real objects that are important in the story.

The most popular
scene is the one in which the mean sisters are tied up and Mutsmag talks
back to them. There are far more drawings of this scene than any other in
the tale. It appears that children relate to the focus on sibling rivalry
in this tale, and Stephenson's adaptation places a little more emphasis
on Mutsmag's development of self-reliance and growing ability to stand up
to her sisters than other versions of this tale.

Walter Pollard,
who performed as the narrator in summer 2000, expressed some disappointment
that he did not appear in many drawings. But he acknowledged that this was
appropriate, since the narrator should remain in the background while his
words help the audience envision the actions that children chose to draw.

For
another Appalachian folktale with drawings by school children (not
fully illustrated), see AppLit's Ferradiddledumday by Becky Mushko.

Other Fully Illustrated Tales Available Online

Please note that this list has not been updated extensively since
2002. Increasing numbers of illustrated stories are available online,
both reproductions of older works of children's literature and recent stories
offered by individual authors and web sites on literature and children.

Between
the Lions. Many stories with still pictures from the PBS children's television
show. Some stories are based on famous literature from fables to Shakespeare.
Each story has related games and guides for teachers and parents. PBSKids.org.
Produced by WGBH Boston and Sirius Thinking, Ltd.

Duvall, Deborah L. Rabbit
and the Well, Rabbit Goes to Kansas and Rabbit
and the Fingerbone Necklace. Illus. Murv Jacob.
2002-2007. Cyber Storybooks with audio by Duvall and beautiful color paintings
by Jacob (by the author and illustrator of the Grandmother Stories Series and Cherokee World Series of picture books). In Rabbit and the Well, a
drought is drying up the Long Man, or river by Ji-Stu's home. The other animals
try to make pots to save water and hold councils led by Terrapin to find better
solutions. Ji-Stu (Rabbit) knows of water underground. Terrapin calls on the
forces of nature and digging animals to help dig a well, but Ji-Stu angers
everyone by not helping to dig, just taking credit for the idea. He finds it
easy to steal water from the well but the other animals trick him with a tar
wolf when they catch him. It begins to rain after Otter uses his oil to help
Ji-Stu get free of the tar wolf and he promises not to steal again. In Rabbit and the Fingerbone Necklace, Ji-Stu "tries to retrieve a magic human finger bone necklace from Little Raven's relatives." These stories
also published by Univ. of New Mexico Press in 2007, 2008, and 2009. See Appalachian Picture Books: Cherokee Tales.

Farmhouse Fables.
Children's Stories
and Fables by Jan Luthman, East Sussex, England. Animal tales offered free for
bedtime reading with or without the illustrations on the web site (mostly
photographs of plants, animals, and landscapes), with "concise versions" for
younger children, and some stories for adults.

Meghan's Fairy
Tale Pages. Personal web site with copies of fairy tales and selected
illustrations from published books. Contains samples of art from recent picture
books by artists such as Ruth Sanderson and Paul O. Zelinsky.

The Three Little Kittens. New York: McLoughlin Bros., 1890. Electronic copy in University of Florida Digital Collections. George A. Smathers Libraries. This book with color illustrations is one of hundreds available in this collection. Fairy tales illustrated by Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, W. W. Denslow, and others are reproduced in this site.